


Damon's Diaries

by persephone20



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-12
Updated: 2011-08-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 08:10:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephone20/pseuds/persephone20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-season one. This story follows Damon's life from his point of view before being turned into a vampire by Katherine, to the missing years with Stefan and Lexi, through two World Wars and, finally, to Elena.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1864

[ ](http://s847.photobucket.com/albums/ab38/rainyrocket/?action=view&current=VDBB_Damon_s_Diary_i_small.jpg)

He smiles as he kisses her. She kisses him. Rolls him over in the bed and Damon's the one begging for it, begging for her to give him everything she is. And she does. It's just ever so much more than he was expecting.

She's like this kitten that Damon had for a couple of weeks when he was a child. He had a child's love for the kitten; it's little yowls, its bats and scramblings for attention. Attention that Damon would happily give it, until the playing gradually turned more serious, and the kitten's fangs would show.

Katherine has fangs. For a moment, as Damon lies on the bed and Katherine hovers over him, he's not sure what she's going to do with those fangs. She's advancing, and her face is changed, and all he can think is how beautiful this makes her, how the dark enhances her eyes, how the pointed teeth are set to frame a perfect and individual mouth. He reaches up to touch the veins that trail down from her eyes in wonder. And, for a wonder, she lets him, smiling as she does.

She's perfect, and a smile starts to take cautiously to the corners of his own lips even as the moment is passing. He realises she's given him everything now, everything she is, everything he asked, in this fleeting moment.

*

Thoughts of Stefan don't butt into his mind until later, but he knows that his brother also has feelings for Katherine. It isn't fair, because Stefan's the favorite of their father and thus their father will give blessings for Stefan and Katherine to be together, thinking they are the better match. For Guiseppe, Stefan is the better match for anything.

But he also knows his brother. If he were to go to Stefan and tell him just how much he felt for Katherine, he knows Stefan would step back, even if it meant risking their father's disapproval.

Yet, the next time he sees Stefan, Damon just can't manage to make the words come.

*

They start seeing each other more often, after that. Night times are when Katherine shines. Damon doesn't know how he hasn't noticed that before, but he notices it now. She takes him hunting and, though at first it's hard for him to stomach, it becomes easier at the thought of her. Every one of their kiss is a wonder. Every time she lets him take her by surprise, he knows it, for now he realises how much stronger than him she is.

It doesn't take long for him to utter the first words of the matter of turning. Like her, he wants to be like her. To be with her forever, to taste the night and know truly that he is one of the masters of it. He wants to move like her. He wants to move with her. Equals with her. By now, he knows that Stefan could never really belong in this world that exists for Katherine, and he thinks she knows too. And just as much, he knows that the rest of eternity would still not be enough for him where Katherine's concerned. She is the only person he's ever loved more than he's loved his brother.

Yet, every time he sees her gaze skating towards Stefan in a room, sees his brother returning that look with seemingly secret smiles, he feels his heart clenching and doesn't know what to do to stop it.

*

He doesn't know when Katherine told Stefan, but he knows. He knows their wonderful secret and it turns terrible when he discovers their father knows. He is held against a wall, and he is screaming, screaming into Stefan's face,

 _"You told him, you told him!"_

All the while he's struggling against his brother, every scrap of love he's felt for Stefan begins to turn to hate.

*

He doesn't know how purely he can hate until his brother turns him with an innocent's blood. The idea of eternity without Katherine is as desolate as eternity with her would have been bright.

"You have damned me," he says to Stefan, in a voice devoid of emotion, still shell-shocked, still wondering if this feeling of emptiness will ever really go away.

It's unfortunate for Stefan that the only time the emptiness is filled is when Damon is following Stefan, destroying everything that he builds. Calm satisfaction fills the emptiness for brief amounts of time, before Stefan moves on and Damon gives him time to start to build again.

*


	2. Stefan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was formerly a one shot, but it's been picked up again because of the lovely coquilleon's suggestions to me today, and now I can't stop writing it.
> 
> References to the season two episode 'The Dinner Party' (2.15).

[ ](http://s847.photobucket.com/albums/ab38/rainyrocket/?action=view&current=VDBB_Damon_s_Diary_banner_2.jpg)

Today my life as a souless demon begins.

I never wanted this life. Never knew what I wanted out of any life, really. Up till now, I have known a few things. I have loathed my father. I have not been made for a soldier's life. I have loved my brother.

None of these things matter anymore. Today, the sun rises, but it does not rise on me. I remember the sun as it pierced my eyes, like it existed only to hurt me. I remember the woman my brother brought to me, I remember the taste of her blood as it poured down my throat. I drunk from her like I was an animal, like I was unable to think for myself. Instinct, then. That is what I am.

That is what my brother has made me.

Tonight, when the moon rises, I will go out again. I will hunt. I will kill. I will feel nothing.

*

I can't do it. I just... can't manage to shuck off the responsibilities of humanity that easily. It doesn't matter that I spent the whole of my life trying to subvert the expectations put upon me by my father. Now that he no longer lives... I am my only moral compass now.

While Stefan... _Stefan_ seems to have no trouble completely letting go of the life he had before. I can't... I can't abide the person he is now. I almost can't stand to be near him. He is my little brother, he forced me into this. I can't still love him, but I love him. It pains me to see him as he is now.

He came to me last night. His face was stained with blood, his eyes were wild, and his cheekbones more pronounced by the candle light and fire. He looked nothing like my brother; and he looked only like the bad sides of my brother.

"Come, Damon! Come with me! Isn't this what you've always wanted?" He shook his head, wild eyes gazing around us as if for any stray movement that would betray a human that he hadn't already found. "Life, Damon. No rules but the rules we make, and _no one_ to order us around."

"You don't know what you're talking about." I glared, but that only made Stefan grin wider.

"I don't know what I'm talking about? You don't know what you're talking about!" Stefan laughed, and it was a laugh filled with wonder, a laugh that I desperately wanted to share.

I don't know how to. He looks around and sees bodies as vessels for his pleasure, sex and blood and lust and life all becoming one thing. I look around and see dead bodies, blood and dirt intermingling, flies circling, the buzzing of their wings co-mingling with the dried blood smell and making me feel dizzy.

I shook my head, then, not wanting him to say anymore. I had this feeling that what he said next was going to break a little bit more of me that he hadn't broken yet, but that didn't stop him from talking. "This is all for you, Damon. All those years, under the weight of father's disapproval. I couldn't do anything for you then but I have liberated you now. I did this for you, Damon!"

Stefan's hands landed heavily on my shoulders and it is the only time that I have wanted to be far from him. Not even when we were competing for the same bride did I feel this aversion towards him. I always knew the better man would win. Now I just know that I'm the better man.

I shrugged away from his hands and they dropped back to his sides. For the first time, he is looking at me with hurt in his expression. He doesn't understand, but that's okay only because I haven't understood anything about him since we traded the world of sunlight for this damned world of ever-night.

"I didn't want it," I hissed, taking a further step back from him. His eyes narrowed. He didn't like that. Well and good. Me too. The rage I'd been feeling inside of me bubbled up to the surface wanting outlet. As my voice raised, I didn't think I'd be able to hold it back now. What if I could never hold it back again? "I never wanted any of this!"

The emotions I felt then felt more powerful, darker, than emotions of anger and angst I'd felt in the past. They're harder to reign, so I didn't. Stefan stormed away from me then, and we found shelter from the daylight in different places. I screamed out in his leaving, senseless sounds that only had their rage to them. Mindless sounds of hate and horror, for no one but Stefan to hear as he had already killed every one of use nearby. We were going to have to move if we wanted to feed again, and soon. Tomorrow night. I have no doubt that he'll find me, that he'll be back for me tonight. He always comes back for me.

*

I am tired. I am weak. I have slept and woken again as if no time has passed, and no rest been gained. I know I must have more blood, but Stefan's hunger makes that difficult for me, even if I was in a mood to attempt to rival his superior strength.

He was waiting for me when I awoke. There was anger in his eyes when I peered at him unbeknownst, but the anger vanished as soon as he looked back to me. I was sore when I moved to stand, and he saw that too.

"We must leave this place," he said. He had never been a slow one, my dear brother. Our minds had always been as one.

"So you can drain another village?" I murmured under my breath. I had not the strength, nor will, to justly come up against him this night.

He looked to me, irritated as though I was a puppy or a small child who had not acted in the way he had expected, yet just as easily forgiven for being misguided. I believe he loves me still. If this is what his love buys me, I find I would wish to do without it.

"There are sounds of population in a reasonable distance from here," Stefan said to me, as though I had not spoken. I shook my head. I will do better in the next place, this I promise myself.

*

I am a monster. I am without humanity. I have blood on my hands, in my face, in my hair. I am full. Straining towards bloated. Stefan must be also, yet he has not yet stopped.

He did not compete with me over food like I thought. He wants me to be strong, I realise. No, he has not said that, but his actions speak loudly for him. I am his elder brother who has known him his whole life. I can read him now. Still the sounds of his hunt reach me through the woods. He is feeding on soldiers.

"Soldiers," he'd said to me with a co-conspiratorial smile. "Perfect."

Perfect. As if these men deserve to die because they'd chosen the life that I had shunned. But this was all for me. I'd never forget that. Thus was the curse my brother had lovingly placed at my feet. Everything I did, everything he had done, all of it was for me.

Was there a more wretched person living on this earth than myself? To be certain, suicide would not be so great a sin for a creature so depraved as I.

Yet suicide was not the path for me. I still possessed such anger, so much savagery, inside of me to end up a spark of dust somewhere in the lower circles of hell. A spark that had once been a useless life and a worse unlife. Well, if there was no redemption for me...

The soldiers that I had fed from this night had died savagely, and in great deals of pain. They were inferior to me as I was inferior to Stefan. But that would change. All of this would change.

*

I would later learn that that night had been a changing force in Stefan's life. While I trod that last step into the darkness Stefan had hand-led me into, Stefan was being brought out of it by his golden-haired savior, another vampire woman by the name of Alexa Branson. Oh, I watched her, waiting for signs that she was like Katherine. I would never forget Katherine. She had already become a symbol in my head of the only light that could have shone in this damned life I was fated to live now. At the first sign of resembling characteristics, I would have taken Alexa Branson for myself, no matter what that did to Stefan.

But she was no Katherine, and so I had no interest in her but for what she could do for Stefan. She would release him from me. Though he had led me into darkness, I was still the elder brother, and I would not lead him through my darkness. Let her have him, if she would, and let her save him.

*


	3. Cecile

[ ](http://s847.photobucket.com/albums/ab38/rainyrocket/?action=view&current=VDBB_Damon_s_Diary_banner_3.jpg)

So begins my life without Stefan.

It isn't the first time we have been without one another. Certainly not the only time I have ventured out alone. It is, perhaps, the only time that I have ventured out without wanting to come back to him.

Life is lonelier than it ever was before, but rage is a happier emotion than loneliness and, through its actions, is also a more distracting emotion. People die at my hand, at my teeth, in a manner that Stefan would be proud of. I try not to think of Stefan; I cannot help but think of Stefan.

And then those thoughts ultimately lead me to thinking again of Katherine.

I cannot get her out of my head. It doesn't help that, whenever I hit major townships, the ladies in society gowns inevitably remind me of her. Those are the ones I am most savage with. I seduce them first. They think perhaps that an offer will be made. I walk like a gentleman and talk like a gentleman. I am a gentleman's son, and he ensured Stefan and I had an education that would not disgrace our family name.

No. We had better ways of disgracing that name now. And I took full-well advantage.

My most enjoyable conquest was of a young woman called Cecile D'arthorn. She _was_ beautiful, and I would settle for nothing less. Her gloved hand shook ever so slightly the first time I kissed it. I think she could not believe her good fortune that a gentleman of my station would pay attentions to a woman who was the third daughter of a man of insufficient wealth.

It was true. Though she was beautiful, it was not purely her own charms that first entranced me. Katherine was my motivation once again.

The first time I met Cecile, she was in the company of a young woman who I only saw from back and profile. Though I strained my ears to hear her, she only spoke loud enough to be heard by those immediately around her, and I could not get closer to identify the sound of her voice better than that. Yet, the way she stood, the way she held the fan in front of her face, the fall of her hair over shoulder and back...

I yearned, and hoped, even knowing it was a fruitless hope.

When I didn't see her out again, I turned my attention to Cecile. At first it was in attempt of gaining an introduction to her look-alike friend. In the end, the pleasure of a new sort of hunt appealed to me. She was innocence itself. Having grown up in the small town of Mystic Falls, every woman who had ever paid attention to me, with the sole exception of Katherine, had known my reputation before they'd really known me. They had been able to get away with being forward. It was not something I had liked in a woman. Katherine's initial coy behavior had driven me to getting to know her long before we had ended up in bed together, before she had ever sunk her teeth into me, before... before...

We had had all too short a time together before she'd been ripped from me.

Betimes, I had to go far from Cecile and vent my frustrations out on lower classes in the township I had come to, just so my game with Cecile could continue to be played thereafter.

I was careful to keep my interest in Cecile restrained and respectable in front of her father. Behind her father's back was another matter. Gradually, gradually, I drew the girl out of her outer shell of innocence. At first, it was just the movement of my kiss from her gloved hand to her un-gloved wrist. Her eyes widened that first time, lips forming a perfect 'O' shape that I longed to kiss, that I longed to bite. Successfully I hid my smirk, along with my inner thoughts.

The day I kissed her hand again, and she looked disappointed, I knew I had her.

From there, it was easy. Pulling her into dark corners, stealing kisses, leaving little 'love' marks underneath the clothing. Cecile became withdrawn in front of her father; it was the fear that he would see, or would guess what went on between us, all of the dirty things that she consented to. However, that withdrawal was dangerous, for me. I knew I had limited time left in which to play out my game.

Now, as I look upon her dead body, in the dead of night, where no one could hear her muffled scream even as it became weaker, even as she tried to convince herself that she'd somehow misunderstood for such monsters as this did not exist, I wonder that I might have thought this little game could have any other ending.

She is beautiful in death, I think. Far more beautiful than she ever was in life. Her lips no longer move, dancing in shapes of mirth or surprise or excitement. They are still, as are the lithe fingers that would press into my skin. Heat no longer exudes from her body as it once did. She is no longer a painful representative of that wonderful mortal coil that I will never again grasp. Truly, it soothes me more to see her this way.

I have truly become a monster.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also? Yes, that figure who seemed to look like Katherine _was_ Katherine.
> 
> Of course it was.


	4. 1894

[ ](http://s847.photobucket.com/albums/ab38/rainyrocket/?action=view&current=VDBB_Damon_s_Diary_banner_4.jpg)

It is 30 years since I have seen Stefan. I should have grown into an old man already, and he too. Instead, I have taken to a habit of responding to old men that call me 'son' with a quick and brutal death. I am above them. I am inhuman. There isn't a scrap of humanity to me, nor ever will be again. I will be inferior to no one.

I have no knowledge of how Stefan bares the years. Instead of coming back to him, it is Lexi who comes to find me.

She looks me up and down. "You're a ripper," she says.

I display my body, arms held out, for her perusal. "As you like."

"I don't like," she says, and there's a sneer to her lips as she says it. I don't like that sneer. I don't like her. But I don't show it. The mask of a smile still rides on my lips. She shakes her head. "I had hoped better of you."

My eyes half close over my eyes and I watch her carefully. She is older than me. I know that I can't overcome her with brute strength. She would be expecting that. So I watch her carefully. I have all the patience in the world to wait for my opening.

"How is Stefan?" I ask silkily.

"I don't know," she replies.

I take a step towards her despite myself, and then must force myself to again not seem to care. Now it is she who is watching me very carefully. "How can you not know?" I ask, making it a sneer.

"I have not seen him for the better part of six years," she replies. She tips her head. "Are you going to make something of that, Damon? When was the last time _you_ saw your brother?"

My anger does not spiral outward as it once did, as it certainly had the tendency to do the last time we saw each other. I shut that side of me off now. It is a thousand times over more efficient. She is not worth my time. Turning, I go to leave.

"He lives a good life, now. A clean life. No blood from innocent victims. No blood from humans at all, in fact."

Despite myself, I turn around again. The astonishment I feel at her pronouncement is simply too much to hide. Flashes of remembered images of Stefan's blood stained face dance before me, villages slaughtered, that awful laugh that had just a little bit of madness to it.

"I know," Lexi says quietly. She is no longer trying to spar with me. There even seems to be a small amount of compassion in her brown eyes. I don't fool myself into thinking that compassion is for me. Only Stefan manages to evoke that kind of compassion. It is Stefan and our father all over again. That even this he can be forgiven for astounds me, turns me mute, and gives her the chance to speak more fully. "It is the last thing I expected when I started instructing him away from the lifestyle he lived. But then he started drinking animal blood only. Says it's the only way to keep himself from giving in again." She pulls a face when she mentions animal blood, then shakes her head again when she comes to the end of her sentence. "Not for me," she adds. "I hate that stuff."

I'm not even thinking of Lexi anymore. This time, when I turn away, her words don't pull me back.

"You're welcome!" she tosses out from behind me, but she doesn't make any attempt to pursue.

As I walk, I mull over the words that she has given to me. _Stefan lives a clean life... animal blood... keeps him from giving in again..._.

I do believe it is time to pay a visit again to my brother.

*

I find him in squalor. I watch him for a while and he is completely unaware of my presence. This would never have happened the last time I saw him. Often, when I came looking for him, he would speed up to me just to show how he had felt me coming.

"Isn't this amazing!?" he would say, before going off to kill someone, something else he had found amazing.

There was none of that amazingness to him now. Now, he lacked even the bright energy he had possessed as a human boy. Even that boy wouldn't have so long remained unaware that his elder brother had come home to him.

"Well, well." His head darts up, and he realises its me immediately. I thank whatever gods are out there for this mercy at least. His eyes are aware when they meet mine. Small mercies. Certainly there is nothing larger. The whole scene before me disgusts me.

"Damon," Stefan says, drawing himself up. I can't think what Lexi thinks of this. Does she know he has come down to this? While she, she still wanders as though her feet barely touch the ground, Stefan wanders like... this.

Maybe this is penitence, I think before I can help myself, but this I shrug away too. We are vampires. Penitence has no place within us.

"Stefan," I say. I step towards him languidly. My eyes narrow bitterly as I see how he steps back for every step I take towards him. "Why, this is very different to the way I left you."

"Things are different now." It hurts, briefly, to hear how wary he is of me, before that too gets shut away. "What do you want, Damon?" he asks me.

"Want?" I asked, as if nothing of that sort had occurred to me. "We are brothers, Stefan. You looked after me so spectacularly after Katherine was gone." I see him wince there, and something predatory rises in me in answer. Yes, wince, brother. All of this you brought down on yourself. Now you will see how it feels. "It is simply my turn to return the favor."

"No..." Stefan cowers. He actually cowers.

My brows draw down low over my nose. I crouch hesitatingly towards him, holding a hand out towards him as though he is a mistreated animal. We used to have wild birds on the estate growing up. I trained some of those birds to feed from my hand. I can train Stefan.

"It is not so bad," I say.

Stefan just shakes his head.

"Please..." I tell myself it is just like the training of birds. I tell myself this because I don't quite believe it. "Stefan, please... brother..."

He looks up again to me then. There is pain in his eyes, yes, but also hope. I hold his eyes, hoping that the doubt I feel in my own motives might be enough to make him believe in me. Still, it is a long time before he takes my hand.

But he takes my hand. I pull him up, and then we are in each others arms. My shoulder becomes wet from tears leaking from his eyes. I cannot say that my own cheeks come out of this reunion wholly dry. But it is dark, and such tell-tale signs are much easier to ignore in the dark. I swallow around the lump that has risen in my throat.

"Come," I say gruffly, still holding onto him as though he might bolt. I can feel the individual bones in his fingers, could snap them, if I chose. This time, I am the stronger of the two of us. "Let's away from this place."


	5. Lexi

[ ](http://s847.photobucket.com/albums/ab38/rainyrocket/?action=view&current=VDBB_Damon_s_Diary_banner_4.jpg)

Stefan drank human blood again, under my tutoring.

"We're vampires. It's what we do." At his continued scepticism, I continued, "Have I ever led you wrong?"

"You said you would have me suffer for all eternity for what I had done to you."

"That was thirty years ago. What is thirty years in the face of brotherhood."

I had him believing it. I had me believing it, too. Surely we could get past this. We had no one else but each other. An eternity of holding onto that one incident in the past would be too cruel. But, then, we don't exactly get to choose what moments stand out in our memories. This time would never fade from Stefan's memory, anymore than his feeding me blood in the first place would fade from mine.

He was hungry last time. This time, he was ravenous. Only one who had been at both sites of Stefan's destruction could appreciate this.

It started humbly, at first.

"We need to get you out of those clothes," I told him, adding, "And that hair."

The barber was the first person.

"I thank you for your services," I said, grabbing onto his shoulders. I could feel my face erupt in veins, my eyes going black. In front of me, Stefan's eyes and skin were doing the same, though he fought it. "You need to do this," I told him, never taking my eyes off Stefan, even though the barber had begun to struggle. It was no effort for me to hold him, but soon he would scream. "He's seen us."

"You can Compel him," Stefan implored, as though by speaking he could compel me to do other than I would do.

But I shook my head. "You must drink. Look at you! You can barely stand."

He wouldn't. And I wouldn't have that. I leaned my face towards the barber's neck, and he screamed, so I ripped his throat out. Immediately, the tang of warm blood hit the air. There was no pulling back for Stefan then. His eyes were black, his cheekbones littered with veins. Canines hit his lower lip, and he licked his lips awkwardly around those fangs. I didn't see him move, but suddenly he was draining the barber dry.

"Good," I told him, stroking the back of his hair, and taking a little nip from the barber myself.

Next was the tailor.

"I must," Stefan was muttering, as his old clothes were thrown away, and new ones were being fitted.

"Not yet," I murmured, careful not to say anything that would unduly alarm the tailor; careful to cut off Stefan before he did anything similar.

"Just a sip?" Again, Stefan was licking his lips.

I never thought myself a restraining presence, but I was that day. When later the tailor pulled me aside to speak of fabrics, he said to me, "I know how it is. I have a brother with a drinking problem."

"Oh," I told him, "you have no idea."

Certainly he had no idea that Stefan was creeping up behind him, taking well more than a sip before he was done. I sighed as the dead man dropped to the floor.

"Great," I said to my brother. "Now we are going to have to find you another tailor."

*

This was a much more populated town than the ones Stefan had plagued 20 years before. Even between us, we could not go through the entire town in one or two nights. People stopped coming outside at night. Soldiers' numbers were doubled, and then tripled to fight against the crime wave, never guessing that it was only against two assailants that they tackled.

It was soon time to leave this town again. Of the two of us, I was made the reasonable one. Though I tried to immerse myself in the bloodlust and enjoyment of the kill to the extent of Stefan, I could never quite abandon that side of me that had once been human. I hated us both, more than a little, for that.

Still, my victims would never have been aware of the part my conscience played on my mind. My kills were every bit as savage as those committed by Stefan, the amounts of blood glutting me just as much as Stefan. For seven years, we cut a swath throughout America, and if I did not love it as much as Stefan, I felt the drive to continue, to commit ever more atrocities.

I didn't worry the morning that Stefan was not with me when I woke up. We had been at this for so long, I had begun to think we were untouchable. Certainly there were very few who could overcome us. And none so far who had come close enough to try.

But I had forgotten about Lexi. Dear, loyal, Lexi.

I found her with him, with Stefan. He had her pinned against a tree, at first, so I didn't think to move to aid him. Instead, I stood against a tree at a far enough distance that their attention would not be drawn to me while they were so involved in each other, but close enough that I could make out their words.

Hers were these: "You don't want to do this, Stefan."

His: "What do you know about what I want to do?"

"I know you. I've helped you. I know that doesn't mean nothing to you."

"Then join us." Stefan was all magnanimous generosity with this offer. I dare say both of us knew she would never take it.

True to form: "You know I won't do that."

Stefan laughed. The sound was harsh. "Why?"

In that single moment, he took his attention off her just long enough for her to take him by surprise. She was older, but she didn't farm human blood like we did. For a while, I really thought Stefan stood a chance.

Now she had him pinned against the tree.

"I'm going to give you an offer," she said, and this part Damon actually quite enjoyed watching. She was glorious in her strength. "You're going to stop killing all these people, and putting the rest of us in danger. Did you near nothing about the vampire story of Bram Stoker? They know about us. They're finding out about us, and your and Damon's actions are putting us all in danger."

"Or what?" Stefan asked. Admittedly, it was not what I would have asked. I might have asked why she hadn't come to me. Why go to the more bloodlusty of the two Salvatore brothers?

"Or you're going to die against this tree," was her answer.

"You wouldn't kill me." It's what I thought too. When she pulled out a stake, I was at her side fast, drawing the hand with the stake far back enough that her arm wrenched and all she had time to do was gasp before my teeth were sinking into her neck.

"Damon, no! Stop!"

It was Stefan's voice, Stefan's words that stopped me then. I pulled back and, just like before, that was all Lexi needed to get the upper hand. She didn't even need to keep her eyes on me. At the same time as she straddled me, stake pointed directly at my heart, she had her head turned towards Stefan and there wasn't a single thing I could do about it.

"You're coming with me," she told Stefan. "You're coming with me, or your brother dies."

Stefan went slack-jawed. His eyes moved from Lexi, to the brother he still loved. He would not let me die. He would rather go back to starving on animal blood, following Lexi and leaving me behind but alive to letting her stake me now. I saw all of that in his eyes before he bowed his head.

"You will make your sworn promise?" Lexi said. It was not a question, not really.

"I swear," Stefan said.

Lexi stepped away from me, disappearing the stake on her person and allowing me to stand unaided. Stefan wouldn't help me now if I attacked her again. He had made a deal with Lexi now, and he was honourable enough that he would keep it.

"I'll find you again," I promised him, as he walked away from me with Lexi, and the almost imperceptible nod of the back of his head was my only reply.


	6. 1952

I didn't find Stefan again. Not for several generations.

The world got bigger. After the turn of the century, it was fair to say that the small world to which Stefan and I had been born to no longer existed. First horses had been replaced, then it was as though a snowball or domino effect swept up the whole of the world and changes were unending.

I saw one thing in those years that I'd never seen before. The First World War was a mess for humanity. It too rolled up slowly. I was hardly the only one who had never before seen the like of what it became. Nobody anticipated how far the reach would truly extend. It was a genuine World War.

And vampires were no safer in the midst of it than humans, for all that it was more difficult to kill us. Twelve hours of sunlight in a day would have been death to so many of our kind that were found in their daytime hiding places and burned before they were ever pulled up to face judgement. I don't know what the soldiers and their generals would have made of that. None of it was ever publicised and I knew so few of my own kind over those years. I daresay I would not have kept hold of my ring had I travelled in packs who did not possess such a magical ability.

For me, the Second World War was just a repeat of the first. I was better at everything that time. Hunting. Hiding. Passing as one of the humans. That skill was one that would serve me very well in the modern world.

The four years of the first war had been a long time to perfect all of these things. But in all of that time, I never saw Stefan, and never saw Lexi, and I began, secretly, to wonder whether they might not still be with me on this earth.

With all of the things I did over the space of those two wars, and in between, I never once went savage. Thinking back on those times, I sometimes shake my head. I thought that if those conditions didn't serve to turn me into the monster I'd seen my brother become, then I simply didn't have it in me. I began to become more at peace with the vampire I was. Less violent with my kills, less trying to be the ripper I wasn't. I wasn't kind, either, but I was good looking, and it was easy to behave in a post-war world when you looked like an attractive 20-something year old male, assumed to have just come back from the Second World War. I was significantly less shell-shocked than the majority of youths returning from war. Everyone wanted to be around that.

*

1952 was the year I met Jacqueline. She was beautiful, a flower child with literal flowers in her hair and a smile that could light up the world. I think, when she first looked at me, she saw a beautiful person who would stand beside her and save the world. If she ended up being a bad influence on me, I ended up being a terrible influence on her.

Her older brother was a man named Joshua. He didn't know I was a vampire of course. What he did know was that I wasn't someone who had come out of the war, broken and ruined for the rest of his life. He knew that it was a smart idea to have someone like that in his life after war, and I knew it was important for me to latch on to someone with obvious family connections and a wholesome community feel so that my lack of family and community would be less pronounced.

We sat around the dinner table at the Walter's house, Joshua having just brought me back home with him.

"So, Damon, what about your family? You must be eager to return to your mother after the war?" That was his mother. She was a quiet woman, but I daresay that the sentiment came from the fact that that's what she herself had wanted. A small minded woman, I was to learn she couldn't understand anything a great deal out of her own experience.

I looked to Joshua, and answered. I had already arranged a personal history through talks with him before I'd ever come here.

"Uh, no, ma'am. My mother died in childbirth. Only my father and brother left after that." Keeping the elements of the family I'd grown up with was easy. It was all in the details of what had happened since. As I told my story, I made sure to space it out with bites of food from the plate that had been put in front of me. "Sadly, Father is no longer with us. He died in the first war." Sounds of sympathy around the table at that, and glances towards the family patriarch. I had noticed, before we'd sat down to dinner, that Joshua's father walked with a limp, and had correctly guessed its origin. Another mouthful of food, and then I continued. "My brother and I both went to this war. There are caretakers back in the house, but I have no wish to hurry home to them. And I've yet to receive word of my brother."

At the close of my story, I made sure to look suitably aggrieved, and so the conversation moved onto other topics. It was decided that I could stay with the Walter's family as long as I should wish it.

"You'll sleep in Joshua's room," came his father's gruff decision. I nodded, used to a much gruffer father figure and finding it easy to take this man's decision in stride.

I met Jacqueline that night. If her first sight had convinced her that I was a beautiful person who would stand beside her without any of my own issues, I reckon that belief hadn't lasted past dinner. She was cooler to me after dinner than she'd been before it. I managed to find time to pull her aside after dinner, and before we all retired to separate bedrooms.

"Have I displeased you?" I asked her.

She jumped, having not realised I was right behind her.

We were on the front porch of the house. There was a swing that was wide enough for two people to sit on, but I left her to it by herself, not wishing to crowd her.

Jacqueline looked up at me, and then away. Uselessly, she waved her hand. "No..." she started, giving her hand some direction by grabbing the chains of the swing. She looked off into the distance, which was the house at the end of the street. "This talk of war is so depressing," she murmured.

"More depressing to live through," I ventured.

She nodded acquiesce to that fact. Then sighed. "This world would be very different if those of good thoughts and actions could step up into the positions of power that those with evil actions seem to hold onto."

Now this I found interesting. I had found people, religious types mostly, who had exclaimed that evil in all its forms should be cast out or destroyed. Mostly, I'd killed them, to show how evil was winning. I'd never before met someone who accepted evil's place in the world, and merely wished it to be smaller. I didn't know what to say to this, until she turned to face me.

"Don't you think so?"

Her face was softened by the firelight that shone through the windows of the house. Her expression was wistful, but there was strength behind the gaze, as well as in her backbone. It appealed to me just as much as the flowing blonde hair and the off the shoulder shirt she wore that betrayed a bra strap that I was careful to keep my eyes away from.

"I think..." I nodded. It was something I'd never given much thought to before, but something about her made me agree. I tried not to think of how different things would have been without all of the equal actions to have passed between Stefan and I, all the way back to Katherine. I would not be sitting here having this conversation with Jacqueline were that the case. "I think evil has it's place in the world, but there's too much of it."

"Exactly," Jacqueline replied. "We need evil in the world or else how can we appreciate the good? It's just like death with life." She smiled gently to me then, never guessing just how relevant this conversation with me really was.

"Jacqueline..." I started.

"Jac, please. Everyone in this house calls me Jac," she told me.

I acknowledged the allowance. "Jac, then."

"Jac! Damon? It's time to come inside." The voice came from inside, but was shortly followed by the appearance of Jac's mother in the doorway. She looked at both of them, noting approvingly the physical distance I'd maintained between us. "Surely it's getting too cold to stay outside?" she asked.

"Just a little longer, mama?" Jac asked, and I watched her mother's face soften.

"A little longer," she allowed, indulgently, and I wondered if this is the face my mother might have worn had she lived long enough to see me or Stefan alone with a young woman. Her gaze turned to me. "But no funny business, mind," she said matter-of-factly.

"No, ma'am," I informed her, respectfully.

Jac gave a small giggle once her mother had gone back inside.

"I can't believe you are that respectful all the time. Didn't the army train it out of you?"

"I... wasn't there for very long, you see," I replied. I'd decided long ago that this was the best reason I had for having come out of it without shell-shock.

"Hmm," Jac answered. "I thought that Joshua would come back different too. Harder. Instead, he just seems... older."

"Your brother is a good man." I actually thought a great deal of Joshua. He had an open heart, and an open mind. Difficult to understand where he had gotten the latter from, with a mother of such closed mind. But maybe it was a generational thing. He was the first human I had felt I could hold a conversation with since I myself had been human.

The conversation became very comfortable after that. Though I never moved from standing beside the swing to sitting next to her in it, I felt very close to Jac that night. After so long without contact, human or vampire, it was a welcome feeling to have. So much had happened over the last several decades so as to have made the separation between vampire and human seem to have less importance than I'd always put upon it. I realised, that night, that that had been some of Stefan's left over teachings from our early days. I had not been the only one who had tried to train the other into the image we desired.

In that summer of 1952, the days fell into an easy pattern. Joshua went back to work with his father and I went out into the town with Jac to see if I couldn't rustle up some work for myself. Jac was amazing at that. Just like I'd latched onto Joshua for that history of family and community, so too was the same effect with Jac by my side. Riverdale was one of those places that wouldn't have given an outsider the time of day without any connections to one of the families that had grown up there. But a lot of places were a lot more closed up than they had been before the wars.

"Wonderful to see you, Jacqi. How's your mom?" asked a woman from the bakery around the time Jac decided it was time for us to have lunch.

"She's fine. I'll tell her you asked," Jac said with a smile.

"You tell her that I appreciate how she patched up my little girl's knee yesterday. This loaf of bread is to say thank you."

"Why thank you! Say, Mrs Mitchell, you don't happen to know of any jobs that are going right now, do you? My friend Damon is staying with us for a while, and he's looking for some work."

"I'm not sure, but I'll ask my husband. If anything's coming up, he'll know."

Jac was smiling brightly as we left the bakery.

"If everywhere was like Riverdale, we'd never have any problems."

She said that kind of thing a lot. Not so much that I became bored of the conversation. Well, mostly. The first time I kissed her lips was to change the direction after a comment like that. I'd been thinking of doing it for a while. It was full daylight when I dared to. Standards had changed in the last hundred years, but I still wouldn't have thought to kiss her on the porch at night. Every time I'd been thinking of it, I always kissed her in the day that first time.

Her cheeks flushed to this delicious shade of rosy pink, and I decided to go for the bashful boy approach. I actually really liked this girl. She happened to bring out the best in me.

"Was that I stupid thing for me to have done?" I asked, glancing at her, seeming-shy, from the corner of my eye.

"No..." A wide smile on her lips was now joining the rosy hue of her cheeks. "I just... didn't know you liked me like that."

"Jac... You're amazing. Just look at you. How could I not 'like you like that'?" The words sounded childish to my already over a hundred year old ears but, for her, I said them. What can I say? 1952 was the year I also discovered I was a sap.

I started working not too long after that. Mr Mitchell had some paperwork he needed sorting through.

"Think you can handle that, Damon?" he asked me, and I assured him quickly that I could.

Lunches in the town square remained a regular thing between Jac and I, and the work had the side effect that we looked forward to our lunches together more than we had before.

There was also a dance that was being arranged quietly in the town, celebrating the return of all the war heroes to Riverdale. Apparently, Jac was on the organising committee. They'd been waiting until they were pretty sure that everyone had finally returned. Her mother knew about it too, but Joshua and I were kept in the dark until about a week before it was to happen, when banners in the Main Street were hung, proclaiming "Welcome back, Riverdale's heroes!"

Jac had been holding my hand and walking us in that general direction during one of our lunches the first time I saw it. I looked down to her. She never could keep a secret for long, and this was one she was deeply excited about. It was written all over her happy, shining features.

"Did you have anything to do with this?" I asked, even though I knew of course she did.

"Are you mad at me for keeping it from you?" she asked me.

I shook my head, dipped my head down to give her another kiss. We'd been stealing occasional kisses for weeks now, for both of us were worried that her parents would kick me out of the house if it became known that anything was happening. But, "I couldn't be mad at you," I said to her then.

Her eyes were shining, and I held both of her hands in my hands when she asked me, "Will you take someone to the dance with you, Damon?"

It was about as forward as she'd been with me thus far. It was also the first thing I wanted to do. "Of course I will," I answered.

The night of the dance came very quickly. Joshua accompanied Jac and I to the town hall where the dance was to be held. Jac was wearing this beautiful sky blue dress, dipping towards her smallish breasts and cutting off at her knees. She was wearing sandles with a slight heel that only further accentuated her gorgeous legs. There were, of course, going to be many chaperones at the dance, and I found myself cursing each and every one of them in advance.

"Jac, would you go ahead inside. I wanted to talk to Damon quickly," Joshua said as we got within sight of the town hall.

Jac nodded her head happily, and hurried up towards the stairs and inside. She would no doubt have no end of people to talk to, from town members, to other people she had organised this with. I wasn't really worried about staying behind with Joshua for a little while. It would give me time to cool my hormones off.

"What is it?" I asked him, game for whatever he was about to say.

"We haven't talked that much. Feels so silly, doesn't it? We sleep in the same room." Joshua looked up towards the town hall, where another banner loudly welcoming the town's heroes awaited us. "I've been so busy getting back into it. Trying to pretend like the war never happened, you know?"

I nodded, understanding. I'd been Joshua's handle to normalcy when he needed it, and now he found he didn't need it as much. Strangely, the thought didn't leave me with a sour feeling. I'd been here long enough -hell, I was all but one of 'Riverdale's Heroes' at this point- and I could find myself another place to stay. It would better his chances with moving things forward with me and Jac, if I wasn't living under the same roof with her.

I pushed all thoughts of my vampire condition to the back of my head, as I'd been doing since the first night I met her.

"I can pack my things up. Just let me find another place to stay," I said.

"Wait. What? No. Slow down," Joshua assured me, holding up his hands to indicate that things were going far too far, way too fast. "Wasn't what I meant at all. Just that... I think I've missed some things that have been going on for you since we came back here. And..." he gave a nonchalant shrug that I saw straight through, "if you want to tell me about it, I'm here to listen."

"Okay..." I too looked in the direction of the town hall, which was currently housing the only person that Joshua could possibly be talking about. I took a deep breath. Funny how the habit to do that didn't disappear even after a hundred years of not having to breathe. "I have feelings for your sister. I think I love her."

Joshua stared. Blinked. Then, "You _love_ her? Gee, really?" He was grinning broadly, as though this was a huge surprise to him.

I was confused. "Josh, what did you think you were missing?" I asked.

Joshua shrugged. "Well, I thought you _liked_ her," he admitted. He looked down the path Jac had disappeared down. "Does she know?"

"No," I answered. "Not yet. With your permission, I'm thinking of telling her tonight."

Joshua let out an elated, "Hah!" clapped me on the back and we both headed inside.


	7. Jacqueline

"No. Absolutely not!" Joshua and Jac's father was shaking his head in abject refusal.

"But what...?" This from Joshua.

"Daddy..!" From Jac.

"You don't know anything about him. Where did he come from? What were his family like? Do we have any proof that he is who he says he is?" This last was directed at me.

"Claude..." That was Jac's mom, but I knew nothing she said was going to be any more successful than the words of their progeny already trying to get Claude's attention.

I just stood in the middle of all of it, the source of all this upheaval, as though it wasn't tearing my heart out. Hearing every word that had come out of him was like having someone reach into my head and heart simultaneously and _pull_.

Least of all because none of it was untrue.

What would their father say, I wondered, if he found me out to be a vampire? Would he grab the iron poker from the fire place? Stick it into me and then go looking for something of an appropriate shape in wood.

Would I even get the chance to run out of town before he rallied the townspeople against me? I'd never had it happen to me, but I'd heard of it and, at times, it had been a near thing with me and Stefan. In my mind's eye, I imagined torches lit up, yelling, crosses, wooden stakes. No. They would not have me. I turned my face aside from Claude's already reddened face and angry glare.

"You see?!" He seemed to take this as some sort of proof, though I don't know of what. He couldn't have any suspicion that I was a vampire.

"Daddy, please!" Jac again. This time, she sounded almost in tears. I knew how she felt, though I hardly dared to look her in the eyes. My eyes were darting desperately back and forth, looking for a place of purchase. This house that had been so homely to me for almost two months was now outright hostile from the intentions of this one man.

Half an hour before, Jac and I had been dancing. The music had gone rapidly from a jaunty gig to a slower record starring saxophones and lazy feminine vocals. Jac had smiled sweetly up at me as she'd come closer to me, drawn into my arms by music until her head was leaning against my collarbone and I was conscious of every beat of blood through her body. That was fine. It wasn't her blood I was hungry for.

Her fingers were slight, held as they were in my hand. Funny, I'd never before noticed that. Always, she had been a whirlwind of energy. When we'd been holding hands, it had been in readiness for her to lead me somewhere. Always pulling, never letting me become aware of just how slight she was.

I was aware of it then. Her wrists were slimmer than the slim ankles of hers that I'd been admiring all night, less than half because I was wondering how she stayed atop the heeled sandles she wore. I wasn't wondering that now. Our feet were moving back and forth in perfect harmony to a song that I wished would go on forever.

Forever had a slightly different meaning for vampires than for humans and, although I'd ceased thinking of them as separate for some time now, I like to think it did give me pause now. What, precisely, would it mean for us if I did ask her to marry me? Would I be like Katherine, allowing this beautiful young person to fall in love with me, only then to reveal the monstrous nature underneath? Would she be accepting of it? _Could_ she be accepting of it, with her views on the evil in the world? And if I didn't tell her, what then? What when we couldn't conceive children for her to raise, children I was fairly certain she would want to raise, even though we had not talked about it. What about the years that would pass without leaving their mark on me? Those things would leave me having to tell her about it then. Surely it was better to tell her now?

She looked at me, and I realised the song was ending. Realised also that, whatever these problems we faced, we could face them together. She was with me, as I was with her.

"Jac..." I said, and stopped. Somehow, that shortening of her name didn't sound right for this auspicious occasion. I was conscious of Joshua standing around somewhere close. Knowing, as he did, that this moment was about to occur, he'd somehow decided that he didn't want to miss a minute of it. I put him out of my head. "Jacqueline Walters," I said to her softly, in her ear. "I don't have much, but what I have is yours... if you would make me the happiest man..." I heard her gasp of breath then, as she realised what I was asking her.

She didn't even hesitate. "Yes," she said. "Oh, yes!"

Joshua was standing with us almost before we'd finished having our moment. It was quickly becoming clear to the rest of those gathered that something big was going on in the middle of the dance floor. Joshua took it upon himself to clear that up right quick.

"They're getting married!" he called. "My little sister and Damon are getting married!!"

Claude had ripped Jac from my arms, and now stood in between the two of us. Joshua seemed horrified. I had held her in my arms for a couple of hours, and it had been nowhere near long enough. No one had beaten us to tell her parents. Joshua had burst into the house with our happy news, and then there had been this.

"Father, if you would just listen! I know this man. He fought by my side in the war--"

"What do you know about this man? It wasn't just heroes that went into the war effort, son. It was criminals too, people they wanted to get rid of. That was the way it was in my war, I've no illusions it was otherwise in yours. And when I think, we've allowed him to eat food off this table for weeks, slept under the same roof as our little girl..."

"Daddy, no..." Jac was shaking her head. Tears were now fresh on her cheeks, having overflown from where they'd welled in her eyes.

Joshua was more articulate. "What proof do you have that Damon is any of these things? He's never treated you with ought but respect and-"

"I will not be argued with in my own home!" Claude cried.

"You will when you're being a bloody idiot!" I had never seen Joshua so incensed. Truthfully, I might have been flattered by this if I hadn't been so distraught. His next words came very slowly, very deliberate. "Your daughter is happy. Was happy, until she came in to meet this.

From his father's next words, it was clear that he'd heard none of it. "I will not be argued with in my own home!" The man seemed to swell to half again his size, and the extra boom to his voice matched it. He reminded me a lot more now of the father I had escaped in Mystic Falls. Perhaps he'd never been anything else. Claude turned to me. "Get out!" he said, in such a loud boom despite his proximity to my face that I actually jumped.

I recovered from being startled, then ducked my head and attempted to get around him so I could gather my belongings from Joshua's room. It wasn't much that I had, but it was mine. You began to grow attached to the things that lasted with you when you lived for so long. But Jac's father was having none of it. He intercepted my path a second time. I was not to reclaim my belongings, I was not to stay in his house a minute longer.

"GET OUT!!"

I did. Tears stung my eyes, out of shock and pain and rage, but only one of those emotions was useful to me. I waited until I was out of the house, the door slammed sharply against my back, before I lifted my hand to roughly rub away the tears that had gathered. There would be no more tears. No more pain. This continued living promoted only an excuse to get hurt, to get hurt and get hurt again, and I vowed then never go to through this again. I hated living, this endless life and the pointlessness of it all. To hell with my humanity. I had seen the very worth of humanity now. This was the last of it; this time I was sure.

*

They were very brave words and, every time I say or think them, I mean them with every ounce of my being.

I sat outside that night, long after Joshua had gone back inside after talking to me.

"Here..." He handed me the pack that was mine, but it was heavier than I was used to. I looked up at him questioningly, my head and heart too tired for words. Words weren't needed between us. "I packed extra things, things you're probably going to need. I figure you won't be staying here." He left it just enough a question that I had to answer, but not much of one, not really.

"No," I answered dully. "I don't suppose I will be staying."

Joshua nodded, also numb. "I don't know what got into Father tonight. Maybe if you stayed a little while..."

I was already shaking my head. There would be no little while.

"Do you know where you'll be going?" Joshua asked, obviously not eager to simply let me go.

I thought about that and then stopped. It didn't matter where I went. If it had taken me almost a century to resolve my feelings to do with Katherine, I didn't want to think how long it would be until I cared about someone again like I cared about Jac.

"I don't know," I just said quietly.

"I see." Joshua sounded disappointed. His voice broke. "I'm really sorry things didn't work out between you and Jac," he started.

"Don't," I said sharply, cutting him off. I tried to soften it by looking at him and showing him the pain in my eyes. "Just... don't."

He went to bed shortly after that, into the bedroom that I was no longer welcome into. There wasn't much more to say. I sat outside and, with my vampire hearing, listened to Jacqueline cry herself to sleep, wake up a couple of times in the night, and resume that crying. I wished I could go to her, but I wouldn't hazard her finding out about my being a vampire. Not now.

She wasn't the only thing I thought of that night. Nor was Stefan, though I came to think jealously that night that he had the best of it. Whether on human or animal blood, he was wholly savage or wholly absolved. At no point in my life, not even when I myself had been human, had I possessed such a gift. But nothing in this world was fair, and evil reigned too strongly for good thoughts or actions to ever really gain a foot hold.

I was gone from the house, and from the town of Riverdale, before dawn. Joshua and Jacqueline would wake up to the screams of their mother as she woke up to the dead body of her late husband lying in bed next to her.


	8. Mystic Falls

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I went back to Mystic Falls for a while then. It took a while. The years had taken me some distance from Mystic Falls before a deeper pain had made it so that I could face the past and my family home without reliving everything that had gone on the first time.

There was somehow a surviving Salvatore decendant in Mystic Falls. He met me at the front door of the boarding house.

"So much has changed," I murmured, still looking around behind me.

"When was the last time you were here?" my kindly 'uncle' asked of me.

That reminded me to snap back to myself. Foolish mistakes would ensure I didn't end up staying here for very long. "Oh, not since I was a kid," I replied, absently.

"Come on, come inside. My name's Joseph," he said, opening the door wider and giving me that much needed permission for me to get into the house. That awareness of needing to be invited into my own house was galling, but I swallowed it.

I claimed to be a distant cousin from a nearby shire without thinking. The war hadn't managed to shell-shock me, but it was still recent enough that people assumed it through the worst of my devastation over my separation from Jac. No doubt the folk made up a story that fit in with how I'd come to Mystic, and the way I'd taken up a room in the Salvatore house, and had barely stepped outside of it.

Sometimes, when Joseph returned from a night out, I caught bits of that story with my vampire hearing.

"The war messes you up pretty bad. I've been making sure to leave him food, and give him his own space. There probably isn't a person in his family over in Thomastown that understands what he's been through. Well, he'll get understanding here."

From that, I gathered Joseph had cousins in Thomastown. I even managed to gather that my supposed mother and father were Eveline and Matthew Price; Eveline was Joseph's own sister. They didn't speak much anymore, and that worked just fine for me.

I stopped mooning about over Jacqueline a couple of months after moving back into Mystic Falls. Remembering to separate 'Jac' from the more distant 'Jacqueline' was part of that. Pretty soon after that, I started venturing out into the town again.

Everything was different apart from the name. Original structures that I'd grown up with had been painted over and rebuilt in places so that I barely recognised them. Too, my reception back at Mystic Falls was nothing like the one I'd found at Riverdale. I was a different person here, I supposed. I may have still had my 20-somethings looks, but shell-shock sure managed to keep most people away.

Yet, they were kind enough when we interacted, just not too interested in much beyond that.

I was doing the good nephew thing, one day near summer of 1953, almost a year after I'd met Jacqueline. Was eating a meal down at the Mystic Grill when I saw him again. 60 years had passed, but neither of us looked any different. Not on the outside anyway.

As I washed down whatever it was I'd just eaten with a mouthful of scotch, I remarked to myself that at least Stefan didn't look like he'd been subsiding on rats in gutters for the last 60 years.

When he approached the table, I made a show of looking him up and down as I replaced the napkin back on the table. "Well," I said, "Lexi seems to be taking better care of you this time. Where is the delightful slut?"

If Jacqueline had brought out the best in me, Stefan brought out the worst; that was very quickly evident. Still, I smiled and touched the sides of my lips lightly as though I'd said nothing more unpleasant than the time of day.

Stefan glowered. I'd never noticed before how prominent his eyebrows stood above his eyes. Maybe that was because I'd never made him this angry before. Clearly neither one of us brought out the best in the other.

"Did you bring her with you?" I asked lightly, for all the world as though nothing was wrong. "Is she following along like a little puppy? A little _female_ puppy?" I waggled my eyebrows. It was kind of tempting, now, to see how far I could push before he swung a punch at me. That would go down well in here; the newcomer slapping down poor Joseph's shell-shocked nephew.

Stefan did nothing of the sort. "Outside, Damon," was all he said.

I frowned. "No," I said. Why on earth would I do that? Or, more importantly, "What are _you_ going to do?"

In answer, Stefan just took a step back. His eyebrows seemed less prominent over his eyes, no doubt through deliberate effort. No doubt there was also a threat implied in there somehow. I shrugged and didn't give another thought to it. If he was subsisting on an animal diet, then I was stronger than he was.

I went back to my meal, noticing how people were still glancing in my general direction out of the corners of their eyes.

*

I didn't see Stefan again after that. Actually, it occurred to me that he might have ceded the town to me after our previous interaction. The thought depressed me more than I liked to admit. Pain though he was, he worked as something to distract me from the greater pain.

I found myself becoming very distracted from that pain on the day that I was heading back to the boarding house in time to see Stefan step inside.

"No," I growled. This was my place. He hadn't even shown an interest in it until I'd arrived. How was I to know that this wasn't some trick of his? Letting me believe he'd only been subsiding on animal blood and then taking me by surprise. "No..." I said again, this time to myself. I wouldn't just go barging in there. That was a way of finding myself in a situation with an only 50 / 50 chance of having the upper ground. Those were not chances I liked.

Speeding away from the house, I went in the direction of the closest food, the smell of the blood drawing me to a woman I'd seen at the Grill a couple of times before I snapped her neck and drained her dry.

I snarled, before biting and scratching the dead body up worse to cover my tracks and hide the obvious bites on the neck. Then I sped back to the boarding house.

Stefan was on a couch, talking to Joseph as if he owned the place.

"Ah, Damon, you're home. Look who's come to visit."

I didn't know what pretences Stefan had devised for his conversation, and I didn't care if I was rude to Joseph.

"A word," I told Stefan tersely, and my brother nodded.

"Apologies, Joseph," he said with a quick smile, before standing up and coming with me.

He wasn't afraid. That much was clear. I'd never given him a reason to be afraid of me. Well, I'd give him a reason now.

I had him by the throat and pressed up against the wall before we were barely into the next room. This close to him, I could tell that he'd had nothing but animal blood.

"Where the _hell_ do you get off challenging me on _your_ diet?!" I demanded.

For me, my fangs were already out, eyes black. I could feel up close to my skin, perhaps trying to pump dry, black blood. Certainly that's what it looked like.

For Stefan, he was unchanged. Even with my hand around his throat, and tightening, he didn't attempt an attack.

"What are you playing at?" I hissed.

"Nothing," Stefan replying, splaying his hands out, as though that could help me believe him.

I believed nothing. "Nobody plays at nothing," I sneered.

Stefan didn't make a reply. Maybe that was because he heard footsteps coming towards us before I did. It shouldn't have been that way, but I was more distracted than Stefan at the time.

Sure enough, Joseph appeared in the hall, with me turning just in time to give him an eyeful.

Just like that, I moved from holding Stefan by the neck, to grabbing and holding Joseph instead.

"See what you've done just by coming here?" I yelled savagely. "He's invited you in now. I can't merely Compel the memory out of him. That means his death. Because of _you!_ "

That got a reaction. Stefan paled now, but didn't show any signs of meaning to attack. Still, I didn't relax my guard. Last time I'd done that around him, Lexi nearly staked me. I had a long memory, and my memories with Stefan went back a long time.

Rather than making a gesture towards me, he took a step back. I almost grunted with disgust, it was so pitiful, but his face was anguished and that, at least, it thrilled me to see.

"Wait..." he said, "Don't." At the same time as stepping back, he extended his hand forward.

I pulled back from Joseph's neck, and pulled a politely inquiring look. Joseph ruined the moment by trying to plead with me. I knocked him unconscious and that problem went away.

"You were saying?" My polite look and tone were all a façade. Ever since I'd gotten here, I'd wondered if all I would ever feel again would be a façade. But it was all I had left.

"Don't kill him," Stefan was saying, searching Joseph's body from where he stood to make sure that I hadn't done that already.

I was fairly lazy about holding up the unconscious man. Unconscious bodies were so heavy, and I hadn't had cause to hold one in a very long time. I dropped him, adding a careless kick to his side for good measure.

"I've been thinking about killing him. But, seeing you here, that just makes the whole decision much easier."

"No!" Stefan cried but, see, that just made me want to kill Joseph even more. "Alright," he said. "Alright, you win, Damon. I won't come back."

"I'm going to need you to swear on that," I informed him. Otherwise... wouldn't want me to go completely crazy and kill or Compel the entire town!" I didn't know where this reputation of mine came from. Consequently, he'd been the one who had killed far more than me, enjoyed it far more than me. But I was the one who came away with the reputation. Still, I wasn't above using it to my advantage in this instance. I opened my eyes wide as I said this, shooting my eyeballs off in all sorts of directions within their sockets, before giving a lopsided grin, all of which I contrived to make me look crazy.

It worked, or seemed to. "I swear... I swear, I won't come back. Just... let him go, and I'll leave."

"Other way round, brother," I informed him, then proceeded to watch every step he took until I could make damned sure he was out of my house. Then I killed Joseph.

The remorse I felt over that just showed me how out of practice I really was with shutting off my emotions. Joseph had been good to me, but that shouldn't have mattered. He was a human, and I shouldn't have let him in. I could hardly have let him live when, as a human who lived the house, his invite to Stefan would stand. No. There was a young man who had just moved to Mystic Falls, a veritable human-shaped cannon fodder who had also picked the boarding house to stay in while he got onto his feet properly here. He'd be just as good to use as human who lived in this house, once I Compelled him not to allow Stefan into the house, and also against noticing any other strange activities that went on in the place.

After that, I scratched up Joseph real good and left him in the forest with the woman I'd drunk from earlier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place as the flashback that's alluded to in the 1.05 episode, 'You're Undead to Me'. Elena talks to an Old Man at the car wash who tells her he stayed at the Salvatore boarding house when he first came to Mystic Falls and that Stefan and Damon Salvatore had been just passing through around the time that the animal attack took their 'uncle' Joseph in early June 1953.
> 
> Mostly, it was all a bit of fun to see if I could fit my story around that tale, spin it my way. I think I've managed to do that!


	9. 1983

[ ](http://s847.photobucket.com/albums/ab38/rainyrocket/?action=view&current=VDBB_Damon_s_Diary_banner_3.jpg)

I couldn't stay in Mystic Falls forever. Couldn't stay in Mystic Falls more than five years without chancing people pointing at me and noticing how I hadn't changed. The average townsperson might have mildly noticed, but the members of the council knew to look for vampires. Their memories were as long as mine, even if theirs had been passed down by stories and journals.

Long before 1960, I left Mystic Falls again. Jacqueline was a pleasant, if painful, memory, but she was useful in her way. After Joseph, I never stayed very long in small towns, never endeared myself to humans, never grew close to them. I was cold. I was monstrous.

For many of those years, I followed Stefan around. I was sure that, if I could forge no close ties, then I would deny them from him also. After a while, a haunted look came into his eyes. The only times when that abated was on Lexi's visits. I couldn't tear him apart from her not just because she was a vampire, but because she was older than us both. Her stays with Stefan became longer and, for me, she began to represent the favouritism that Stefan would always get. I loathed him, but I loathed her more.

I started to imagine the inventive ways I would hasten her to her final death. Sometimes, I would manage to turn Stefan back to my side, and that would make the punishment against her all the more rich. I would invent lies, convincing lies, that would set both of them up where I wanted them and then we would kill her. The plan would only be more poetic for the fact that Stefan would live on with the guilt that he had killed Lexi without reason. I would abandon him then, to his immortal grief.

I had to stop hunting Stefan when Lexi was near. I knew I was close to doing something stupid that would have ended my own life.

In 1982, I reunited with other vampires in Chicago. It was a large city. I knew by now that these were the best places for hunting, far better than any provincial place like Mystic Falls that really hadn't gotten bigger over the centuries. In Chicago, I would hunt, several vampires could hunt, and the bodies would merely go missing, or end up on milk cartons. No cry would be raised about it. No council put together by Founding Families would ensure this city was not overrun by vampires.

Considering that, between 1982 and 1983 Chicago had its fill of vampires from Mystic Falls, perhaps they would have been better to put such a council in place.

I had first followed Stefan to Chicago. Assuredly, he had figured that the big city would be as successful in hiding him from me. It took me a day and a half to find him. Since that wasn't very sportsmanlike, however, I delayed in letting him know that I was there. There were a lot of rats in Chicago; in Chicago that was the only kind of animal meat that was plentiful. I made it my job to go into the alleyways ahead of him and destroy all the rats I found. For three days we went on like this. It was a new sort of torture I'd devised for Stefan. He seemed to have no idea it was me and so no inclination to flee onwards to the next place.

Nevertheless, the sport was growing old when, one night, near twilight, we were interrupted.

The girl doing the interrupting seemed completely out of place in the mouth of the alleyway where she stood. I had just destroyed several rats. Their entrails were strewn across building walls and garbage bags. There was only one sport left in this game I was playing with Stefan, and that was to find out whether he'd attack a human for blood before licking blood and entrails off an alleyway floor.

This girl arrived before Stefan, but I knew he was just around the corner, probably still scavenging in the last alleyway I'd left bereft of food for him. The girl couldn't have been more than 15 or 16 years old, but she sounded full of authority and affront when she spoke.

"What are you doing?"

Standing up to my full height, I turned around and glared at her. There was no point in hiding my vampire visage, so I didn't bother. If she ran, I would chase her. I would kill her in time to return to my game with Stefan.

Yet, as I stared at her, this girl showed no signs of running, and a distant memory started to rise within my head. Narrowing my eyes, I came to realise I recognised her. She had been a girl a long time, since the days when she had been following her mother Pearl around Mystic Falls in 1864.

"Anna."

There was still censure in her eyes, censure that I couldn't understand. I hadn't done anything to her.

But she was shaking her head. "How could you, Damon? He's your brother."

Ah. It wasn't herself she was fighting in defence of, then. It was Stefan. Again.

I growled. "You know nothing of this," I informed her, demanding that she take the hint.

"You're looking for something," Anna said, then. "You wouldn't be doing this if you weren't."

I shook my head, immediately and violently denying the words Anna was saying. But even as my head shook from side to side, my eyes lighted on the evidence around me. Why else was I doing this, if not to deprive Stefan of his self control, and the closeness that that self control won for him, closeness that had never been mine to keep. My jaw tightened but, though I remained poised to strike, I no longer growled, or tried the multitude ways available to me to intimidate her.

"Katherine's here, Damon." Anna's voice was soft now, as though she was trying to appeal to a wild animal. When had I become that wild animal in truth? Always before, that part had been played by my brother. I started to see myself as Anna must be seeing me. It was not a pretty picture, but her words allowed me distraction from that.

 _Katherine?_

I didn't know what that meant to me. After almost 120 years, surely it meant nothing at all. I'd thought she was dead. I'd loved again since. What did she matter to me? She left me!

"Katherine's dead." I spoke harshly, daring her to argue, daring her to be able to prove me wrong.

"She's not." Anna's steady voice held the conviction of youth. I'd obviously died just a little bit too old to be able to retain that tone of conviction. Yet, I didn't see a lie in the words she was saying.

"Where?" I hissed and, just like that, Stefan was forgotten. Jacqueline was forgotten. Anna was forgotten, but for being the fount from which this magical information could arise.

Anna stared at me for a long time. I don't know what she saw. Maybe she just took pity on me. I didn't know then that she was as lonely in her way as I was in mine. Maybe, if we'd both seen past the masks each of us were wearing, things might have gone differently. I was aware that my brother was still in an alleyway close to this one. Any minute now, he'd be coming by here, hopelessly scavenging, hopeful that this alleyway would grant him more than all the others.

I couldn't let him find out about Katherine. Couldn't allow him to get there first.

Anna had obviously had more contact with Katherine than I had ever been granted. She offered me the answers I sought. "Look for her, Damon. Bring to her attention that you're here. You know how she's got to feel as though she's in control of every situation. Use that to make her come to you."

I nodded once, then again. I would get her attention by being so vicious, so blood-thirsty... Actions like that would also draw Stefan's awareness to my presence, I knew, but that would mean he would leave this city and that too would play into my plans.

Katherine had always liked that darker part of me, always wanted to draw it out even when I'd been human. Well, she'd see it now, and she would come to me with hunger. That hunger would fill up the void I'd been living with for the past 30 years. No, for longer. Since the day she had walked away from me.

*


	10. Elena

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, this chapter and the last owing to the flashback that's alluded to in the 1.14 episode, 'Fool Me Once'. Anna admits to having known Katherine was in Chicago in 1983 but that, even though Katherine knew where Damon is, she didn't try to find him.

[ ](http://s847.photobucket.com/albums/ab38/rainyrocket/?action=view&current=VDBB_Damon_s_Diary_banner_1.jpg)

Things are never so simple, are they? Katherine never came for me. When I later told Anna this, she stared at me in surprise.

"But... She knew where you were, Damon."

I didn't need to hear anything more. The hurts went deep enough. Besides, there were plenty of other hurts that struck me between the times now and then.

*

I searched for Katherine with unwavering dedication. That dedication found its form in so many debaucherous acts that I can hardly bring myself to remember them all. In that time, I more than earned for myself the reputation I had, plus some of Stefan's reputation on the side.

We didn't see each other much in those decades. He was no longer my priority, and bringing me back to myself was clearly never his.

My single-minded dedication was all for nothing. Katherine never came to me, and I never found a way of successfully locating her on my own.

Eventually, I went back to Mystic Falls. My reception this time was nowhere near so friendly. 'Uncle' Zack stared at me as though I was a bug, one that he wanted to squash, but didn't quite want to deal with the consequences that would come with a failed attempt. I gave him a thin lipped smile and he invited me in between gritted teeth. My guess was that he was on the council and, as a result, has heard about the ~~vampire~~ animal attack that killed Joseph.

"This town is clean of vampires right now, Damon," Zack said to me as he followed me up the stairs to my room. "If there start being any 'animal attacks', we'll know where to look."

I soon had cause to think Zack a liar, for Katherine had finally come to me, knowing that I was in Mystic Falls, and displaying herself so clearly in my sight.

It was in front of the high school that I saw her for the first time. It surprised me that I couldn't make myself take a step towards her, nor could I look away. I tried to make it look casual. She was talking to a dark-skinned friend and I was standing with my arms crossed against a nearby tree, a knowing smirk on my lips. It surprised me that, instead of ingratiating herself with the people who are now in the council, she was surrounding herself with shallow high school girls. It seemed the kind of thing Stefan would try to do. But maybe the dark-skinned girl was a witch. Katherine always had a penchant for dark-skinned witches, going where the power was and all.

My head tipped to the side, waiting for the inevitable quirk of the lip, perhaps. A slight head turn, or curling of hair away from the ear. If I'd still had a heart that beat, it would have been pumping hard with exhilaration over this first meeting in 150 years. I could barely contain myself enough to stand still. Every moment that passed brought me to new heights in anticipation.

The school bell rung, and Katherine broke off her conversation with her witchy friend. For a moment, her eyes flashed up in his direction. My heart was in my throat. Here it was, the moment I had been waiting for.

Without nod, smile, or other acknowledgement, Katherine's eyes kept moving past me as though we were strangers. I felt frozen in place as she and her friend wandered into the school.

There was something wrong. There had to be!

I was too incensed to notice, on that meeting, something that should have been obvious to me straight away. A vampire of her years, she would have had to be aware of me, show some sign of awareness when I'd arrived. I could believe, with Katherine's powers of dissembling, that she'd managed to hide that sign. But, more importantly, I should have felt something from her. Some recognition that there was another vampire in near vicinity. I certainly hadn't been dieting on animal blood, so my senses were all live and aware.

I didn't remember sensing that there had been a vampire standing so close to me when I'd been near Katherine.

Still, I had to be sure. It was sometime till she was separate from her dark haired friend. Later still when I could get her alone in a place that wasn't her front yard. But I was patient. I'd had 150 years to perfect that trait.

I ran into her, seemingly by accident, in the mall. She was on her way from the car to meeting her friends. She was looking into her handbag when I knocked into her.

Her head lifted quickly. "Oh! I'm sorry, that was completely my fault. You're not hurt, are you?"

As age peered into me with eyes that were not Katherine's, her voice bearing a huskiness that Katherine's had never had, I blinked several times as I stepped back.

"No, not hurt," I answered, the huskiness now in my voice as my words spoke the lie.

She nodded once. Not Katherine. "Are you ok?"

This time I just nodded. "Uh, sorry," I mumbled, thereafter making a hasty exit.

The knowledge that she wasn't Katherine left me with a feeling of betrayal, the fault of which landed squarely at this girl's feet. This impostor. In that moment, I could hear Katherines laughter echoing in my ears.

*

I couldn't look at Elena without seeing Katherine. My imagination was filled with images of me and Katherine, living the life we should have lived. Utterly in charge of this town. Rolling around on beds, in cars, over dead bodies. Blood pouring over from her lips into my mouth. Laughing at Stefan's patheticness --he really did make such a terrible vampire-- reminiscing over old times, making new times.

I began to compile a mental list of every difference between Katherine and Elena. It was essential. The only other option was to go quietly mad in a town with a human teenager who looked like Katherine that I could not make myself walk away from. In time, I realised their looks were in fact their only similarity. I had already started stalking her, sometimes watching while she was sleeping alone in her bed, sometimes passing notes while her teacher failed to keep the attention of the class, sometimes walking to her car, or having a conversation with friends. I saw that Elena had a softness that Katherine might have possessed as a human, but certainly never possessed as a vampire.

Sometimes, when I got close enough to overhear conversations she had with her friends--Caroline and Bonnie, and her boyfriend Matt--I could hear the caring in her voice. She genuinely cared when her loved ones hurt. She always wanted to do something to help. That didn't just include her friends. She was committed to many of the town celebrations, roping her friends in so those celebrations would go off smoothly. She was one of the popular girls at school, so there were many students who were happy to be roped in.

Then one day, just before the middle of 2009, Elena came back to school different. For one wild and irrational minute, I thought someone had turned her. Another vampire had come into town. Stefan had taken this away from me. Katherine had been swept up in a rage at the thought that this imposter could replace her. The only thing I couldn't figure out was why any one of them would give her a ring that let her walk out in the day time rather than more simply letting her burn.

Elena hadn't been turned into a vampire. She was as living and breathing as she'd been before the weekend. It was her parents that were dead. Drowned in a car accident. It was a miracle that Elena had been saved. This much was shared with me very helpfully by Caroline when I Compelled her.

Caroline, Matt and Bonnie were all very sympathetic towards Elena, but she was distant towards them now. I watched as she told Matt that she couldn't be with him any more. Instead of feeling pity over the way Matt's face crumpled, I smiled a grim smile at the way that this simply paved the way for me.

Because, I knew now, the second best thing to having Katherine would be to take Elena.


End file.
